Scott Seiver Poker Strategy

For someone who's sandwiched in between Phil Ivey and Fedor Holz on the all-time tournament money list, with more than $22,000,000 in winnings, Scott Seiver often doesn't get enough credit.

He's a brilliant cash game and tournament player, he won his WSOP bracelet in the $5,000 no-limit hold'em event in 2008 (which is impressive given the average field size of a WSOP no-limit tournaments in the post-Moneymaker era), he has a WPT title and he's a high-roller tournament machine.

Taking Daniel Negreanu Behind the Woodshed

While Daniel Negreanu's results in televised cash games leave a lot to be desired, he's still one hell of a poker player and that makes the way Scott Seiver dealt with him in PokerStars The Big Game all the more impressive.

The first hand in the clip above starts with Kid Poker performing what's known as sleeper straddle, which is basically a blind open raise on the button that gives the player using it the ability to go over the top in case his opponents in the blinds elect to just call the straddle amount.

Seiver made a very questionable preflop call in the small blind, but in the live poker environment where players only see 15 or 20 hands per hour, timing is often much more important than hand selection. It's clear that Scott's intention was to punish the fact that Negreanu decided to commit a lot of dead money to the pot with a wide range of hands, and that became really obvious once the young pro decided to back raise against Negreanu's 3bet.

The flop looked much more disciplined from both players and it made a lot of sense given that both of them flopped some showdown value on a coordinated texture. However, the lack of flop bet in position from Negreanu made it so it was really hard for him to represent a value holding on a later street, especially when we take the wet board into account.

The second hand was much less interesting, it was a nice, aggressive and slightly amusing - given the hand selection -  3bet followed up by a solid post-flop play which resulted in another win for Seiver. What's important to point out though, is the fact that Seiver cares about things like metagame and image.

He doesn't shy away from showing his hand and letting the opponent's know that he's willing to push every edge. Also, he's not really concerned with appearances, he's concerned with winning money and he didn't really care about other players ridiculing the way he chose to disguise his physical tells.

Asking Tough Questions

This memorable hand from 2014 WSOP Big One for One Drop showcases the power of proactive betting lines when compared to reactive ones. While many other players, including Tobias Reinkemeier, would most likely be capable of taking the same line Scott took given the board texture, stack to pot ratio and favorable turn card, it's certainly easier said than done and aggressive playstyle requires a lot of discipline in the long run.

However, the rewards offered by this approach become very obvious when we dissect this One Drop hand. It was almost certainly a +EV turn call for Reinkemeier but given the context of an extremely high buy-in tournament, it's really hard to blame him for folding. Poker players aren't robots - not yet anyway - and this is why Seiver's relentless aggression is so powerful.

Putting Pressure On Capped Ranges

Another interesting hand from the One Drop tournament showcasing the difference in aggression between Seiver and other successful poker players. Big One for One Drop tables were full of pros able to 3bet and continuation bet light, but Scott took it a few steps further.

Once he realized that Esfandiari wouldn't play a middle or high pocket pair by slowing down on turn and river in a 3bet pot, he decided to punish his capped range with a perfectly sized pot size bet in the situation where both players were playing the board.

One Level Higher

While Seiver's playstyle can look somewhat exploitable at times, especially when we account for his questionable hand selection in many spots, he's also extremely good at reading table dynamics and overall metagame, which allows him to stay one step ahead of most opponents.

In this hand against Joe Hachem, Scott relied only on the fact that it's just about impossible for Joe to construct a raising range that makes sense on a KTT rainbow board in a multiway pot. Given the lockdown texture, Hachem should call with the top of his range and give opponents the room to make aggressive plays with hands that don't have good equity against the effective nuts.

That's what made his raise so suspect and that's why he couldn't really take the heat with a relatively strong hand like KJo. Seiver was there to apply the pressure and he amplified it further by showing his hand to the opponents, setting up for some additional EV in the future.

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